Cicely Tyson was my inspiration to become an actor.

You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny.

They say the two most important days in a person's life were the day you were born and the day you discover why you were born.

Do not live someone else's life and someone else's idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you.

When your passion and drive are bigger than your fears, you just dive.

When you pray, God puts people in your life to lead you when you cannot lead yourself.

You can't be hesitant about who you are.

Let me tell you something: The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.

I don’t want anyone putting any limits on me.

I don't have any time to stay up all night worrying about what someone who doesn't love me has to say about me.

All you really need to do is shift people just a tiny bit for change to happen. It doesn't have to be huge and humongous.

We are writing in the age of stylish minimalism that in truth has become even more cautious because of word processing. Nowadays, creative writing students are underwriting rather than overdoing it.

The quickest way to stop noticing something, may be to buy it—just as the quickest way to stop appreciating someone may be to marry him or her.

Knowledge of sin is the beginning of salvation.

Anyone in the comedy world knows that Horatio Sanz and Chris Parnell are two of the funniest guys around.

We always take credit for the good and attribute the bad to fortune.

You cannot train a horse with shouts and expect it to obey a whisper.

placid, adj. Sometimes I love it when we just lie on our backs, gaze off, stay still.

You've got to stand up and do your own battles. My daddy taught me that a long time ago, that you fight your own battles. The only way to shut everybody up is to win.

The conflict is not between Christianity and Islam or between East and West - instead, it is between stupid people and other stupid people.

Great orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct shadows to the generations following them. The spell vanishes with the voice.